Gaza air drops: 'Chancing the waves' for a packet of biscuits

STV News

6 days ago

ITV News International Editor Emma Murphy joins the Jordanian Air Force as it carries out an aid drop over Gaza
From above it's impossible to see the detail, but such is the scale of Gaza's horror it's grotesquely obvious even from thousands of feet up.
We approached Gaza over the Mediterranean.
It is a jarring transition from the glittery beauty of a blue sea to the blackened, flattened landscape of war.
Few buildings are still standing and even they are empty shells rendered derelict by battle.
A landscape, once a place of life, now screams of death, an abyss of lives lost in a 21 month war.
Around 60,000 people died in the land beneath and more are now dying, not just from the strikes and shells but from a lack of food. Aid has been airdropped into Gaza by the Jordanian Air Force. / Credit: AP
Our journey towards Gaza was with the Jordanian Air Force in a C130 plane laden with parcels of aid.
Basic food stuffs designed to sustain life for those who manage to find it.
No one believes aid drops are the answer to the spiralling hunger crisis but it is a way to try and get some support in. Humanitarian aid has been airdropped over Gaza on Tuesday. / Credit: AP
In Gaza, they are used to watching the skies more out of fear than hope and the sight of the planes sends hundreds running towards the drop zone.
Our colleague Mohammed Abu Safia, ITV News' cameraman in Gaza, follows the desperate mass of people scrabbling to find any food.
He sees men, women and children ploughing into the sea, a packet of biscuits or bag of flour worth chancing the waves for. Palestinians collecting aid that landed in the Mediterranean Sea after being airdropped. / Credit: AP
Others forage through undergrowth battling each other to find something to feed their families with.
If it's a choice between your child eating and someone else's, the niceties are gone.
We cannot land in Gaza and international journalists are banned by Israel so this was the closest we could get to document what is going on in Gaza.
As we made the turn back towards Jordan and its plenty, the lucky few beneath hurried away with food as valuable as treasure.
While those who did not find any contemplated another night of hunger.
Maybe tomorrow they will be luckier.
What a way to live, what a way to die.
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